Tweet Seraphic Secret invited our good friend Jake Novak to review George Gilder’s important new book. Imagine you’re a carpenter who naturally relies on a good hammer to get your work done. But after years of reliable service, that hammer starts to act strangely. Sometimes it pushes the nail into the wood, and sometimes it […]

Tweet As most of my readers know, Seraphic Secret does not drink. Not wine, nor any type of liquor. That’s because alcohol, even the smallest amount, is a sure-fire trigger for a migraine. So, you ask, why is Seraphic Secret reviewing a book dedicated to wine? Well, it’s simple, the author of this elegant and fascinating […]

Tweet New Jersey born historian Michael B. Oren was a Zionist inspired-teenager, who, in 1970, when shaking hands with the Israeli Ambassador Yitzchak Rabin, promised himself that someday he would be Israel’s ambassador to the United States. Like a great many American dreamers, Oren’s ambition was realized — sort of. Oren was Israel’s ambassador to […]

Tweet Seraphic Secret has not yet read Tuvia Tenenbom’s “Catch the Jew.” (We have been reading “Days of Rage” by Bryan Burrough, an astonishing and important book, and a review will follow in a few days.)

Tweet I usually read several few books at a time. I think I have a touch of ADD. Or maybe I’m just intellectually restless. Because we live in Los Angeles where the sun shines almost every day of the week, I often sit in Casa Avrech’s patio eating lunch and reading. Here’s a sample of […]

Tweet Back in the days when Shakespeare still meant something to a lot of people, I wanted to be a great dramatic actress. Before I knew it I was in Hollywood . . . Thus begins Darcy O’Brien’s novel “Margaret in Hollywood” (1992), the story of Margaret Spencer, an early child star of vaudeville and a […]

Tweet Darcy O’Brien (1939 – 1998) was a scholar of Irish literature, and also the author of several best-selling works in the true-crime genre. “Two of a Kind: The Hillside Strangler” (1985) was adapted into the television film, “The Case of the Hillside Stranglers” starring Richard Crenna. “Murder in Little Egypt,” (1989) is about a small-town Illinois […]

Tweet One of the most important strategies for a writer is to set the tone for his work as quickly and as accurately as possible. As a screenwriter, I make it a rule to set the tone for my script in the very first scene. When I write a novel or a memoir, I make […]

Tweet John Wayne’s commitment to Conservative values cemented his support of Israel. Indeed, there was a time when even Hollywood liberals supported Israel publicly, and through generous charitable contributions. Tragically, classic liberalism is dead, replaced by a postmodern Democrat party—progressivism—that is radically left and infused with the classic Jew-hatred of Marxist-Lenninism. In Scott Eyman’s compulsively […]

Tweet Scott Eyman’s superb biography of John Wayne presents a multi-dimensional portrait of a good and decent man who went out of his way to help others. But out of intrinsic modesty, Wayne never made his kindness and charity a public calling card. Before becoming a superstar in Stagecoach (1939), Wayne was working like a […]

Tweet Many persons who have followed my career on the screen and stage mistake me for a Jewess. This belief perhaps was strengthened when I married Ricardo Cortez, my third husband, the only one I ever really loved, and whom I am now trying to divorce. Although I didn’t find it out until almost a […]

Tweet To read Part I, please click here. To read Part II, please click here. Broke, with her second marriage in shambles, and blacklisted by studio boss L.B. Mayer — Esther wouldn’t trade amorous favors for movie roles — Esther Ralston flees to New York in 1939 to rebuild her shattered career.

Tweet Part I here. Esther Ralston was blessed with a lovely, melodic voice, thus it’s something of a puzzle why Paramount dropped Esther’s option in 1929. Esther was a rising star who, between 1924 and 1929, starred or co-starred in twenty-five films. She was a natural for talkies. But the mystery is soon cleared up […]

Tweet They called her, the American Venus. She lived in a Hollywood mansion with a staff of servants. Her chauffeur drove a limited edition limousine. But she ended her days in a trailer park in Ventura, California.

Tweet This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades. —Cairo’s radio station “Voice of Thunder” in the tense weeks preceding the Six Day War. Jewish history does not exist in the past. It is in the here and now. When […]

Tweet Scott Eyman’s superb new biography, “John Wayne: The Life and Legend” is an exhaustive look at Wayne’s long life and career as Hollywood’s most iconic star. Eyman points out time and again that Duke—no one called him John, Jack, or his birth name, Marion—was not just Hollywood’s greatest star, but a symbol of America […]

Tweet The other day, a friend from shul told me that he feels like giving up. “Reading your blog post about the countless gender choices on Facebook,” said my friend, “made me realize that my grandchildren won’t be shocked at this craziness. To them, it will be normal. And that is sick. It feels like […]

Tweet The new Barbara Stanwyck biography, A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel True, 1907 – 1940 by Victoria Wilson, is, with appendix, footnotes, index and acknowledgements, over 1,000 pages long. And it is just volume one. This first, full scale bio of Barbara Stanwyck is an exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting) study of Hollywood’s greatest actress. […]

Tweet In 1988, only two years before her death, Ava Gardner, living in semi-seclusion in London, unable to get work, and running dangerously low on funds, asked the late British author Peter Evans to ghostwrite her autobiography. Deadpanned Gardner: “I either write the book or sell the jewels, and I’m kinda sentimental about the jewels.” […]

How I Married Karen

The new bookby Robert J. Avrech

Available in All Major Book Stores

Adobe Digital Edition's version is available through the Lulu store!

About Me
Robert J. Avrech
Los Angeles, California

I'm an Emmy Award winning screenwriter. I'm also an observant Jew, a religious Zionist, a conservative Republican, and a member of the NRA. I've been writing and producing in Hollywood for over twenty-five years. But the focus of my life is my family: my radiant wife, Karen—with whom I have been in love with since I was nine years-old—and my two daughters, who, thankfully, look like Karen. Not too long ago, we had three children. But our son, Ariel, died at the age of twenty-two from cancer. We miss him terribly. We think about him practically every minute of every day. People tell us that time heals, but Karen and I know this is not true. Time grinds away doing its terrible work. Ariel is gone. Yet absence becomes presence.

Ariel Chaim Avrech, ZT'L, May His Righteous Memory be a Blessing.

Subscribe to Seraphic Press via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Email Address

Search Seraphic Secret

Annual Ariel Avrech
Memorial Lectures
Young Israel of Century City

Fourteenth: June 11, 2016Daniel Greenfield: “Fighting Anti-Semitism and Defending Israel in the Age of BDS.”